Hut 8 signs $9.8B lease for AI data center in Texas, stock surges over 30%

Hut 8 just inked the kind of deal that makes Bitcoin mining look like a lemonade stand. The company announced a 15-year lease valued at $9.8 billion for the first phase of its Beacon Point AI data center campus in Nueces County, Texas, covering 352 megawatts of IT capacity designed for hyperscale AI training and inference workloads.

Investors responded by sending HUT shares up more than 30% on the news, which is particularly striking given the company actually missed earnings estimates for Q1.

The deal structure and what Hut 8 is building

The lease is structured as a triple-net, take-or-pay agreement. In English: the tenant bears the operating costs and is locked into payments regardless of how much capacity they actually use.

The unnamed tenant will occupy the first phase of what Hut 8 envisions as a 1 gigawatt campus, with initial energization targeted for Q1 2027.

This isn’t Hut 8’s first rodeo in the AI infrastructure space. The company previously commercialized capacity at its River Bend campus in Louisiana. Combined with the new Beacon Point deal, Hut 8 has now secured a total of 597 MW of AI data center capacity across two campuses.

The aggregate base-term contract value across both sites sits at approximately $16.8 billion. If renewal options on those contracts are exercised, the total potential value climbs to $25.1 billion. The company projects an average annual net operating income of about $1.1 billion from these agreements.

Development partners on the Beacon Point project include American Electric Power, Vertiv, and Jacobs.

From Bitcoin miner to AI landlord

Hut 8’s transformation is one of the more dramatic strategic pivots in the crypto-adjacent space. The company built its name and its business on Bitcoin mining, accumulating significant energy infrastructure and operational expertise along the way. Now it’s channeling those exact capabilities—securing cheap power, managing large-scale electrical loads, and operating in remote locations—into the AI data center market.

Several former and current Bitcoin miners have explored or executed pivots toward AI and high-performance computing, including Core Scientific, which emerged from bankruptcy partly on the strength of a major AI hosting deal.

What this means for investors

The 30%-plus stock surge happened despite an earnings miss. The market is pricing Hut 8 as an AI infrastructure play, not a Bitcoin miner.

The $1.1 billion in projected annual NOI gives Hut 8 a revenue profile that looks dramatically different from its mining-era financials.

For crypto-native investors who hold HUT as a proxy for Bitcoin exposure, this shift creates an interesting tension. The stock may increasingly trade on AI infrastructure fundamentals rather than correlating with Bitcoin’s price.

The tenant remains unnamed, which means investors are trusting Hut 8’s characterization of the deal without being able to independently assess counterparty creditworthiness. And while 352 MW is substantial, the broader 1 GW campus vision requires continued execution on power procurement and construction. The Q1 2027 energization target for initial operations also means revenue from this deal is still quarters away.

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